This paper explores socioeconomic and cultural conditions that predispose black women to choose paths to non-traditional gender roles and life choices more often than white women. Acknowledged is a need for scholars and researchers to look at the lives of black women, not from the dominant, white, male-centered scholarship model but from the social and cultural perspective of black women's lives and environments. Part I reviews selected socialization literature on blacks and raises questions about the validity of using one single body of scholarship to explain the diversity of black socialization patterns. Part II explores the direct relationships between socialization patterns for blacks and choice of non-traditional gender roles. Part III discusses the ambiguity that many black women face as they assume these non-traditional gender roles and gives results of a pilot study that the author is presently conducting. Part IV discusses the areas where future research on the study of socialization and non-traditional gender roles of black women might be done. (Author/KH)